I've just gotten into this podcast, and I think it's pretty amazing. It's basically like listening to the audio of a really well done history special from BBC or PBS, but it's more entertaining while also being more in depth than any of those shows I can recall off the top of my head.Anyone else a fan?

Did he give any feedback? I would imagine that a lot of the stuff he goes into sticks pretty closely to the well known narrative on a given area. I'm no history buff, but I was pretty familiar with everything in Thor's Angel's, but I still thought it was presented brilliantly.

Burt wrote:No, but he tends to not give feedback on anything.I like the way Carlin synthesizes events across history to illustrate a common theme. My history courses were mostly linear descriptions of events.

He's trying to emulate the old style historians who did tie things together w/ a narrative, like his boy Will Durant.Obv it's the bee's knees

Just finished listening to it. Not a bad ep, though a lot of it was stuff I learned in high school. I cringe every time he pronounces the word "again" - I've never heard anyone say it his way - "A GAIN"."

This is next in my queue. Hardcore history may be, for now at least, the highest and best use of the podcast medium. I hope he clears things up for me re WWI. It seems no matter how many times I hear the narrative there are too many players for me to keep it all straight.

I bet he'll switch gears after this one. It seems like the temptation for anyone producing history content is to do everything on WW2. Like how the History Channel was known as the Hitler Channel before they started making bigfoot hunter reality shows. It's probably hard for him to find narratives that are doable within his audiobook confines too. His downfall of the Roman Republic must have been fuck 20 hours. Imagine trying to condense something like The rise and Fall of the Third Reich into an audiobook. It would probably be 80 hours minimum and he'd still be working on it for a decade.

Burt wrote:This is next in my queue. Hardcore history may be, for now at least, the highest and best use of the podcast medium. I hope he clears things up for me re WWI. It seems no matter how many times I hear the narrative there are too many players for me to keep it all straight.

He does - he really does. It's amazing how he can take a very complex historical event and couch it in a way one can understand, even if they are driving/doing dishes/making dinner while listening. Even though I had heard much of it before, his overall presentation is what makes it great.

My favorite episode is "Prophets of Doom" with Lutherism and the whole anabaptist thing...an incredibly interesting story I had never heard.